Hayabusa Mission Topic

[TheAnt]

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48263000/jpg/_48263238_hayabusa_img0705_001.jpg

I don't see how that much material could come from the Earth since the canister was perfectly airtight on arrival.
Congratulations, JAXA!

I can only concur. It's not as much as anyone could have hoped for, but it really looks like JAXA got the title for the first asteroid sample return mission.

 

[3488]

Wayne raises a good point about WHY it is soooooooooooo vital to open the canister under cleanroom, sterile conditions.

Myself I think they ARE samples from Asteroid 25143 Itokawa, I suspect JAXA did all they could to ensure that the opening chamber was as contaminent free as was possible.

I agree with orionrider too that it seems 'too much' to just be contamination. I hope it is not tiny matal filings from either the manufacturing process or from opening. I doubt it very much, but we have to be careful. Soon we should know for sure once the particles have been looked at.

If indeed it is proven that they are samples, it is more than enough to carry out serious research.

Below is in Japanese, but shows the canister & the contents.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB43JKnTo8Y[/youtube]

Andrew Brown.

 

[orionrider]

More than enough for isotopic measurements. I bet they already know...
How old would that be? I guess about 4Billion years... Oldest dust on the planet :mrgreen:

 

[scottb50]

More than enough for isotopic measurements. I bet they already know...
How old would that be? I guess about 4Billion years... Oldest dust on the planet :mrgreen:

The openings around the inside suggest they got gas samples also.

 

[3488]

You are certainly correct there orionrider, it would be the oldest dust on the planet.

Possible exceptions may be some of the Stardust particles caught in the aerogel from Comet Wild 2 or some of the lunar regolith bought back by Apollo & the Soviet Luna sample returns.

The 25143 Itokawa dust IMO will match anything else in age bought back, unless Stardust bought back any Intersteller dust particles that may predate our own Solar System.

I hope we get to see some microscopic images of the dust shortly.

JAXA DID a SUPERB job at getting this back. I think it is genuine 25143 Itokawa samples.

Andrew Brown.

 

[JonClarke]

Wouldn't it have been nice if the canister was full?

Still grains are better than nothing. Someone I know slightly at one of the local unis (Trevor Ireland) is on the science team. His comment on the local radio was that "a nanogram might not seem like much to but for me it is an awful lot of atoms!"

 

[nimbus]

So that grain shape at 2 oclock in the canister picture isn't it? Because that looks like more than 2 nanograms. Unless the picture's deceptively small and the material is really fluffy.

 

[kg]

More than enough for isotopic measurements. I bet they already know...
How old would that be? I guess about 4Billion years... Oldest dust on the planet :mrgreen:

What defines the starting date for the age of dust geologically speaking? I'm assuming that this material has gone through alot since the solar system formed. It's been exposed to radiation, heating and cooling from the sun, impacts from meteors, all kinds of weathering... What sets the clock at zero when considering the age of rocks and dust?

 

[orionrider]

It would basically date from the formation of the Solar System, 4.6 billion years ago. Unless it has been knocked off Mars or another planet, but that is less common. From WP:

The main asteroid belt occupies the orbit between Mars and Jupiter, between 2.3 and 3.3 AU from the Sun. It is thought to be remnants from the Solar System's formation that failed to coalesce because of the gravitational interference of Jupiter[...] The rubble piles and scattered asteroid families are believed to be the results of collisions that disrupted a parent asteroid.

It looks like there are many (>30) visible grains, dark and light-colored, solid and fluffy. Judging from the size of the container seen at the end of the video (fits in the hand) some are more than 1mm across, which is really good.

they got gas samples also

Possibly. Not that there is any atmosphere on the rock, but volatile compounds mixed in the samples would evaporate at 'Earth temperature'. Tricky to analyse in the near vacuum, but who knows?

 

[orionrider]

Links about using the isotopic ratio to calculate the age of a sample:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_geochemistry

This process is relatively fast, but they must first catalogue, picture and visually analyse all the samples, then decide which ones to destroy in the mass spectrometer. Or they can fragment larger samples.
After that, they need to correlate (make sense of) the data, debate with other scientists, draw conclusions, write a paper, which will be peer reviewed and finally published. Only then do we get to know what's in it, how old, where it comes from, etc.

We can also expect 'leaks', or partial results like "traces of amino acids". Likely title on SDC:
"Life molecules found on alien world!"
:mrgreen:

 

[JonClarke]

So that grain shape at 2 oclock in the canister picture isn't it? Because that looks like more than 2 nanograms. Unless the picture's deceptively small and the material is really fluffy.

As I understand it, those large grains are between the outer and inner sample container, and may be contamination. It would be nice if they weren't the small grains that are more likely to be asteroidal are in the inner container.

The nanogram comment is just to remind people how little is neede, I suspect they have quite a bit more than that already.

But they are wisely playing it safe, not announcing anything until they are certain as it its provenance.

 

[nimbus]

I understood the nanogram bit, I just have no clue of the scales of dimensions for anything like this. Thanks Jon.

 

[orionrider]

I just have no clue of the scales of dimensions

Watch the Japanese video, at the end you see the scientist holding the container in his hands. Gives an idea of the size :idea:

 

[nimbus]

Roid dust I mean..

 

[vulture4]

Although not a complete success, the Hayabusa mission cost of about $170M was relatively low for a planetary probe, let alone a sample return mission and a lot has been learned from the various failures that could benefit a new mission with a similar design and objective. In comparison to a Mars sample return mission, the cost of escaping from the gravitational field is negligible and the scientific value is certainly comparable. Ion propulsion generally requires a very long mission duration and a small payload, not conducive to human flight. Overall, to me missions of this type make more sense from a scientific viewpoint than human flight to an asteroid, at least until we have an established LEO infrastructure and better propulsion technology.

 

[orionrider]

the cost of escaping from the gravitational field is negligible

Yes, but reversing course in mid-space is not. The real cost is the difference in speed between the asteroid and the Earth.

 

[EarthlingX]

Mission recap, with images, animations, podcast, .. :

http://www.planetary.org : 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast: The Flight of Hayabusa

Sep. 12, 2010 | 20:50 PDT | Sep. 13 03:50 UTC

By Emily Lakdawalla

Near midnight on June 13, 2010, the sky over the Australian outback was full of stars. Hundreds of people stood below that sky, having driven for hours through the barren Red Desert for a chance to witness the death of an interplanetary explorer. On schedule, at fourteen hundred hours UTC, a pinprick of light appeared in the sky.

 

[3488]

Like this.

JAXA.

Asteroid 25143 Itokawa rotating in front of the JAXA Hayabusa Spacecraft.

Many images from Hayabusa were put together to create this movie of the 535 metre by 294 metre by 209 metre type S asteroid rotating once every 12 hours & 8 minutes.

Andrew Brown.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Wow, that's a great animation!!!

 

[3488]

I agree Wayne, it's brilliant.

Slightly off topic, I expect you've seen these.

NEAR / Shoemaker Spacecraft encounter of the 66 KM by 48 KM by 46 KM sized Type C main belt asteroid 253 Mathilde.

NEAR / Shoemaker of rotating 33 KM by 13 KM by 13 KM Amor asteroid 433 Eros.

Another here of 433 Eros spinning over & over from very much closer in!!!!

I hope eventually we'll get to see something similar from ESA Rosetta with the large main belt asteroid 21 Lutetia!!!

Andrew Brown.

 

[centsworth_II]

...rotating once every 12 hours & 8 minutes.

So you could attach an image of Itokawa to the pivot point of a clock's hour hand for a real time rotating model!

 

[MeteorWayne]

And if an AC clock, a slight adjusment in power frequency (to 60.666 or 50.555 Hz respectively) would make it run perfectly

 

[kg]

JAXA.
Asteroid 25143 Itokawa rotating in front of the JAXA Hayabusa Spacecraft.
Andrew Brown.

In one of the frames from the rotating asteroid 25143 Itokawa there is a small flash of light. Could this be sunlight reflected off something on the surface or is it more likely to be some kind of noise (cosmic ray strike, etc,..)? I don't mean to be a pest, it just keeps catching my eye every time it goes by.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Had to look a few times to see it, but I finally did. Best guess would be some kind of data noise as you described.

 

[kg]

Thanks MeteorWayne,
For a moment there I thought I had discovered an alien observation post that the folks at JAXA had somehow overlooked. I was going to mention it before but didn't want to be the guy who got the Hayabusa Mission thread tossed into the unexplanined binn.